It is fashionable to emphasize the diversity of
ideas within Scripture, and it is commonly held that Scripture contains
theological contradictions. We are grateful to Professor Marshall of Aberdeen
University for this article, in which he examines some of the evidence and
offers an evangelical response.

The Germans are intensely systematic in the way in which they
discuss and criticize the Bible, and it is not surprising that the names of
many critical processes are originally German, such as 'form criticism'
(Formgeschichte) or 'redaction criticism'
(Redaktions-geschichte). These critical processes are often carried out
systematically one by one in study of a given text. Thus the major German
commentary on Mark by R. Pesch divides up its treatment of each paragraph into
five clearly distinguished sections: 1. literary information and translation;
2. genre-criticism and form-criticism; 3. verse-by-verse comments; 4. tradition
criticism and comments on the quality of the tradition; 5. redaction criticism,
with a view to disceming the author's intention in the section.[1]

In the present paper I do not want to explore directly these
various types of approach to the text. Instead I want to consider another type
of approach which can be carried on alongside these other approaches and which
curiously does not figure in the textbooks of biblical criticism. Like many of
the others it has a German name, whether or not the process itself is of German
origin, and there is no one generally accepted English equivalent.

Two examples of the method

Let me begin with two areas where the process has been applied.
First, we look at Acts. In his commentary on Acts 5:1-11, the story of Ananias
and Sapphira, J. Roloff concludes his remarks by saying that this story
reflects an experience of the early church with which it was particularly
difficult to come to terms because the church thought of itself as the
community of salvation directed by the Spirit; the problem was that among its
members there were some who had entered it only in a nominal kind of way and
for the sake of the status it gave them, but who were not ready for a total,
inward surrender of themselves. Then he continues:

This conclusion does not in any way reduce the
sharpness of the theological problem. There are two points especially which
give rise to critical reflections. 1. Here we hear a rigourism which is
scarcely reconcilable with the spirit of Jesus and which therefore found no
followers in the further development of church discipline, Even where church
discipline cannot be avoided, it must not forget the love that seeks for the
lost over against the concern for the church which must be protected (Mt.
18:10-17). It must preserve a place for repentance, reconciliation and
redemption (this is true even of I Cor. 5:3ff.). 2. With the implicit claim
that the church can and must be the community of salvation, perfect and free
from sin, here in this world, the church's situation of tension in this present
world is overlooked. Here Paul (1 Cor. 10:13) and Matthew had the clearer
theological vision: in its present existence the church cannot anticipate the
perfect salvation-community of the End. It must continue to live with sin and
hypocrisy and leave the separation of the 'tares' from the 'wheat' to the
future judgment of God (Mt. 13:37-43).[2]

Here is a good example of a place where a commentator listens to
the theological message of a text and says: compared with other biblical
statements, it is unacceptable and wrong. Within the Bible there are different
statements, and some of them cannot be accepted.

We may consider the implications of this approach for Acts by
glancing at an essay by another German scholar, G. Harbsmeier, in his
discussion of 'Our Preaching in the Mirror of Acts'.[3] He begins from P. Vielhauer's statement that the Lucan
Paul differs from the real Paul in the manner and content of his proclamation,
although Luke himself was not aware of this. The difference between the two in
fact amounts to contradiction.[4] Harbsmeier claims
that this conclusion is reached by use of the historical-critical method and is
convincing. But, he asks, 'should this scientific conclusion also be valid
theologically?' and he replies, 'Yes, it should.' No dogmatic presupposition
about the unity of Scripture can be used to deny that such divergences exist.
The historical-critical method is simply the appropriate way of listening to
history. To deny the historical-critical method would be to deny the
Reformation itself and would lead to the clericalizing of the Bible and
knowledge generally.

The significant point here is that Harbsmeier is concerned with
our preaching. He holds that the church's preaching (he is thinking primarily
but not exclusively of the Lutheranism of his day) tends to be strongly
influenced by the Lucan Paul. There is a standing centrifugal tendency in the
church from Paul to Luke. Catholicism, he says somewhat ironically, is
thoroughly 'scriptural' in basing itself on Acts - as 'scriptural' as the
letter of James is (according to Luther). But even Reformed preaching goes back
to Luke rather than Paul. Paul is interpreted by means of Luke. Against this
tendency Harbsmeier wants us to get back to the real Paul instead of the
distorted Lucan Paul.

In short, alleges Harbsmeier, not all biblical proclamation
proclaims Christ in the same way. We cannot assume that because a passage is
part of Scripture therefore it truly proclaims Christ. Even in the case of
Scripture Luther's tag is true: simul justus et peccator! We must beware
of making the Scripture a paper pope. Rather we must follow the principle was Christum treibt, which is admittedly not a historical-critical
principle but is the most critical 'spiritual' principle.

For a second, and briefer, example I turn to the Pastoral
Epistles. In a German book on the concept of ordination in the Pastoral
Epistles by H. von Lips the word in question is actually used:

[p.80]

The concrete result is, however, harder to grasp
because it depends on our answer to the question as to what relevance we assign
to the Pastorals as NT writings. It does not seem appropriate either simply to
take over their understanding of ordination as normative or to reject it
totally on the grounds of a theological Sachkritik To take over the
understanding of ordination in the Pastorals as the biblical basis and
legitimization for present-day ordination would mean overlooking the fact that
this is only the witness and the conception of one part of the NT. To
reject this understanding in a broad way would constitute a verdict on their
value which ignores the historical context of this understanding of ordination.
It seems most appropriate to regard the understanding of ordination in the
Pastorals as a model formed in specific historical circumstances; that means
that it is not eo ipso binding for today, but it is to be taken seriously as a
model that must be tested for its validity for today.[5]

Here we have the same kind of problem. What is the validity of a
specific piece of biblical teaching for today? And here we have a specific use
of the term Sachkritik in a way which lets us see that it is concerned
with the validity of biblical teaching.

The name and definition of the method

I shall continue to refer to the method by this German name, but
it will be helpful to note that the possible English equivalents for it include
'content criticism', 'theological criticism', 'critical interpretation',
'material criticism'[6] and 'critical study of the
content'.[7]

It will not surprise you in the least that among the heroes of our
tale, or, if you prefer it, the villains of the piece, we must mention R.
Bultmann. Here is a comment on his Theology of the New Testament by
Markus Barth, who asks how a conscientious exegete can develop a systematic
exposition of Paul's theology that contradicts part of the source material:

[He can do so] only when he feels himself called
to Sachkritik on Paul, 'just as Luther used it, for example, on the
Epistle of James'. The victims of Bultmann's Sachkritik include some
Pauline statements on the Holy Spirit, the resurrection, the second Adam,
original sin, knowledge, Naturally the hostile crumbs swept to one side by Sachkritik include the statements about creation, predestination and the
incarnation of Jesus Christ which Bultmann has demythologized. In any case
Bultmann is convinced that he is putting the 'real intention' of Paul over
against the actual words of the text.... When Bultmann attributes the use of
juridical, mythological, cosmological, mystical and idealistic concepts to a
'superstitious understanding of God, the world and mankind', he expresses as
cleariy and simply as possible the criteria for his Sachkritik.[8]

Now we must be clear as to what is going on here. It is not quite
the same as the attitude expressed in the words: 'I want to be free to disagree
with Paul.' In that wish there is expressed a contrast between what Paul said
and what I think, and if we disagree, so much the worse for Paul. That is a
question of Paul's authority over against my own authority. We'll come back to
that in a moment. Rather what has been expressed is a contrast between one part
of Scripture and another which stands in contradiction to it, or between what a
writer actually says and what he really means. According to Tom Wright, we find
an example of this in the procedure adopted by proponents of universalism.

The proponents of universalism admit very
readily that their doctrine conflicts with much biblical teaching. What they
are attempting, however, is Sachkritik, the criticism (and rejection) of
one part of Scripture on the basis of another.[9]

That is to say, critics observe or search for places where there
are doctrinal contradictions in Scripture and then have to decide which passage
they are to follow in preference to the other.

Clarifying the definition

Let us now clarify this with a series of comments:

1. It is primarily theological contradictions that are at
issue. Factual contradictions on historical, geographical and similar matters
are not the problem here, except insofar as they form part of the theological
differences. If Paul tells us that he visited Jerusalem only twice and Acts
says that he visited it three times, that is a factual contradiction and it is
to be sorted out by historical and literary investigation. If, however, John
dates the crucifixion on the day when the passover lambs were slaughtered, that
could be an indication of a theological understanding of the death of Jesus
which was not shared by the other Evangelists and which might stand in tension
or contradiction to their understanding.

2. The contradictions may be between two statements in Scripture
or between what a writer actually says and what may be presumed to be his
real intention. Thus, if Paul in one place requires women to be silent in
church, it could be argued, as it has been, that here he had a temporary lapse
into Jewish, rabbinic ways of thinking, from which he had been largely set
free, and that his 'real' theology is to be found in passages which emphasize
the equality of men and women in Christ. This shows that the 'real intention'
of a writer is not to be understood simply in terms of'He said x, but he meant
y,' but rather 'Although in some places he says x, the main line of his
thinking was y.'

It is in fact this problem of the 'real intention' which is
basically the issue. The only discussion of the problem in English known to me
is that by Robert Morgan who offers this definition: Sachkritik 'refers
to the interpreter's criticism of the formulation of the text in the light of
what (he thinks) the subject matter (Sache) to be; criticism of what is
said by what is meant'.[10]

This may be the point to mention that some critics would argue
that if not even a biblical writer is capable of writing with utter consistency
and always getting to the root of the matter, still less can a group of writers
do so. When Karl Barth wrote his commentary on Romans he said that the
commentator must get beyond the actual words of the text to what he called 'the
inner dialectic of the matter'. This was questioned by Bultmann who said that
it is 'an impossible assumption that the "inner dialectic of the matter" must
be adequately expressed everywhere in the Letter to the Romans', and who
maintained 'that no man - not even Paul - always speaks with the central point
in mind', and therefore held that criticism of what Paul had to say about the
'central point' is 'inseparable from exegesis and actual history in
general'.[11]

3. The theological contradictions may be found in three sorts of
area:

a. First, they may be found between earlier and later
writings. There are obvious questions about the relation between teaching
in the OT and teaching in the NT. Some early Christians wanted to argue that
Gentile believers should keep the law of Moses, but the decision which carried

[p.81]

the day was that these laws were not applicable to Gentiles and
that it was not even necessary for Jews to keep them: Jesus, for example,
declared all foods 'clean'.

b. Second, they may be found within the writing(s) of
one author. Bultmann was doing this in the case of Paul. A further example
can be found in Paul's understanding of the law. It is clear that the relation
of the law to the gospel is something of central importance to Paul, and that
he is quite clear that one is not saved by the works of the law. But is all
that Paul says about the law consistent with that central affirmation? Not all
critics would agree that it is. Some would say that there is a clear
development in his thinking; others more unkindly say that Paul is just
inconsistent.

Similarly, there can be comparison of djfferent more or less
contemporary writers within a group such as the NT canon to see who gets it
right. We saw how Roloff compared the theology of Acts with that of Jesus and
Paul and opted for the latter. Thus the question may be about the contradiction
between a passage in an individual writer and the 'real intention' of the NT as
a whole. Such a procedure assumes that there is some kind of 'centre' or some
norm by which the writings can be assessed. It is here that we often speak of a
'canon within the canon'. This phrase can be understood in two ways. First, it
may provide a criterion for rejecting what is thought to be inconsistent or on
a lower level. Second, it may provide a basis for interpretation and for
assigning writings to their proper functions in relation to the total purpose.
One may reject James because it appears to be inconsistent with Romans or one
may say that it has a different, a lesser, but nonetheless a legitimate and
necessary function alongside Romans.

c. Third, there is the assessment of what the NT says
over against the interpreter's own understanding of the progress of
revelation. A critic might argue that the Bible itself points us forward to
certain lines of development in doctrine. For example, although the Bible
itself is not a pacifist book, its understanding of Christian love might be
thought to lead to an attitude of total non-violence. If so, we would have to
judge that certain statements in the Bible fall short of that ideal. In other
words, the Christian faith and practice to which the Bible points has been more
fully revealed now than it was then, or perhaps we should say that the full
implications of the biblical revelation now stand out more clearly, and,
measured by that standard, certain parts of the Bible must be judged inadequate
or out of date in their teaching.

4. The result of such analysis is inevitably to force a judgment
as to which texts are to be taken as expressing the real intention of a
writer or the main thrust of the Scripture and how they are to be
interpreted. This raises the question as to how one determines the 'real
intention' or the preferable text. At least two criteria would seem to
operate:

a. One is the attempt to determine the central or
controlling line of thought in a given writer, and to assess all that he
says in the light of this central, basic line of thinking. Thus, if Paul's
central line of thought is justification by faith, we shall play down the
importance of what he says on judgment by works or regard it as inconsistent
with this main line and drop it from our theology.

But how do we determine what is the 'real intention'? Thus to go
back to the example of Paul on women, it could be argued (1) that both
Galatians 3:28 and 1 Corinthians 14:33-35 express the real intention of Paul,
namely that within the equality of men and women in Christ the woman must
nevertheless be subject and keep quiet in church, rather than (2) that one text
expresses the real intention and the other is a temporary aberration, or again
(3) that, although Paul expresses both thoughts, the direction of his thinking,
or the trajectory which he was following, leads to an unqualified statement of
the equality of women to speak and minister alongside men.

b. The other criterion would seem to be the personal judgment
of the critic. Now in a sense this is inescapable; even the most determined
fundamentalist must still decide what it is that Scripture says, and his own
prejudices may well affect his interpretation. Thus one cannot help wondering
whether fundamentalist defenders of slavery or apartheid who find something in
Scripture that we can discover only with the utmost difficulty are not
interpreting it consciously or unconsciously in the light of their own beliefs.

5. In his essay from which I quoted a moment ago, Tom Wright goes
on to say: 'We leave aside the implications of this [procedure of the
universalists] for a doctrine of scripture itself.' But we cannot leave this
question aside here. It is obvious that the kind of approach which I have been
outlining stands in tension, if not in contradiction, with the popular
conservative evangelical understanding of the authority of Scripture which
regards all of Scripture as authoritative. This paper is an attempt to discuss
the significance of Sachkritik from a conservative evangelical point of
view. We have therefore to engage in a dialectical process, that is to say a
kind of dialogue in which we examine the significance of Sachkritik for
our doctrine of Scripture and the significance of the doctrine of Scripture for Sachkritik. It could be that there are lessons to be learned on both
sides.

Evangelical presuppositions

Let us start our further examination by looking at our
presuppositions.[12] There are two important
characteristics of the conservative doctrine of Scripture which are relevant
here:

1. When we speak of the supreme authority of Scripture, we speak
of the authority of Scripture taken as a whole rather than of isolated
texts within it. This means that we assume that Scripture as a whole is
harmonious in its teaching, and therefore we can take its total message as our
guide. But although this approach may appear to put all Scripture on the same
level of truthfulness and authority, in fact it has an important implication,
namely that isolated texts taken on their own may convey a message which is at
variance with that of Scripture as a whole. In other words, the meaning of
Scripture is the meaning of Scripture as a whole, or of wholes within it,
rather than the meaning of the smallest parts.

2. Hence the complement of this principle is that individual
texts must be understood and interpreted in their context. This is an
obvious and universally accepted principle for the interpretation of a verse
within a paragraph, a paragraph within a chapter, and so on. But it is also an
essential principle with

[p.82]

regard to seeing texts in the context of the Bible as a whole.
Thus, to take the obvious example, the OT laws in the Pentateuch are seen by
the Christian in the context of the NT teaching about the place of the law in
the light of Christ, and therefore the laws about the offering of animal
sacrifices are recognized to be no longer valid.

It may thus appear that we do in fact practice something that
looks like a kind of Sachkritik in that we assess the validity of texts
in their context, and that context is both local and global. Take, for example,
the letter of James. If we were asked to name a writing that expresses the
heart of the gospel, I do not think that it would be a likely candidate for the
honour. Its function is to correct misunderstandings of the gospel as regards
ethics and to furnish ethical teaching for Christians; it presupposes the
gospel, but it does not proclaim it. Teaching about the person and work of
Jesus is implicit rather than explicit. Therefore, James occupies a less
central position than, say, the gospels or Romans. Implicitly we assess James
as falling into a particular place in the total NT revelation. We would insist
that if we take the teaching of James in isolation we shall get a one-sided
understanding of the Christian message; it is not that what James says is
untrue in any way, but rather that it must be understood in the context of
teaching that is found elsewhere in the NT.

It may seem, then, that what we are already doing is Sachkritik. But advocates of the method use various phrases which
suggest that it rests on presuppositions which we do not share. Consider the
various phrases that have already appeared in the expositions which I offered
of the method - 'the implications for a doctrine of scripture itself', 'once it
is agreed that the biblical tradition itself is not revelation', and so on.
Morgan comments that if the aim of theological interpretation is to correlate
the theologian's understanding of the faith with what he finds in the
tradition, and if it is agreed that the biblical tradition is not itself
revelation [my italics], then the method is a proper one and indeed a
necessary one in theological method 'where theology is understood as the
interpretation of the tradition anew in every age, in the light of contemporary
experience which includes rationality'.[13]

Is, then, the method possible only on the assumption that the
biblical tradition is not in itself revelation, in the sense that I can point
to a copy of the Bible and say without equivocation, 'That book is the Word of
God'? - and, make no mistake, that is what the evangelical doctrine of
Scripture implies. If so, we face two questions. First, we have to make a
critical assessment of Sachkritik, examining both its methods and its
presuppositions. Second, we have to ask whether there is an acceptable form of Sachkritik which is in harmony with our understanding of
Scripture.

Two obvious weaknesses of the method

First of all, it can be argued that there are in fact weaknesses
in the method as it is practised.

1. The first is that it is inconsistent in its attitude to the
Bible. The question that arises is whether and in what sense the tradition
is revelation. Here Morgan offers some interesting comments. He contrasts the
method with Marcionitism and Liberalism which both rejected parts of the
tradition out of hand. Sachkritik, he says, 'allows the tradition to
remain intact; it "gets round" obstinate pieces of tradition by
reinterpretation, instead of removing them.' He then compares the theologian to
a chess player, playing with the pieces of tradition and attempting to persuade
an opponent of the superior cogency of his own position by marshalling the
traditions appropriately. To do so he may have to sacrifice some pieces. But
two features emerge. First, after the game, all the pieces are put back on the
board for the next game; the canon remains intact from theological generation
to generation. Second, one can only tell as the game proceeds which pieces may
need to be sacrificed.'[14] The really interesting
point here is the insistence that each time the game is finished all the pieces
must be put back on the board; that is to say, some players recognize the
existence of the canon and remain tied to it - although of course there are NT
scholars who are not so bound. There is, therefore, a recognition, at least by
some scholars, that in some sense the NT is a locus of revelation and possesses
authority of some kind. It is not surprising, then, that F. Bovon explicitly
accuses Harbsmeier of inconsistency in that despite his attack on Luke-Acts he
does not reject it from the canon.[15]

Second, there is the problem of subjectivity, to which
Morgan has again drawn attention. The problem is determining the criterion for
judgment, which is supposed to be the revelation itself, namely the Christ who
is heard and apprehended in faith. But here the method becomes subjective and
circular since the exegete 'comes to what is meant only through what is said
and yet measures what is said by what is meant'.[16]
Bultmann, however, claims to avoid subjectivity in that he finds 'what is
meant' through a historical discipline rather than a theological discipline;
for him Sachkritik is a necessary part of the historical interpretation
of the NT. In other words, he is asking not just what Paul means for us today,
what we can take from him for our theology, but what was Paul's own 'real'
theology. Morgan becomes critical at this point, and accuses Bultmann of
sometimes using a key to open the doors of NT interpretation and sometimes a
crowbar. He remains sceptical that Bultmann has been able to identify
theological and historical method and argues that the element of subjectivity
remains. It is very easy for the critic to set up an artificial criterion for
the central message of Scripture. Yet Morgan still finds that on occasion his
method is justified, particularly where a NT writer seems to contradict
himself. The admitted risks must be taken if critical scholarship is to be
possible.[17]

Here again Harbsmeier is open to criticism, and once again the
criticism comes from outside the evangelical camp. F. Bovon attacks him on two
levels. First, he attacks what is in effect the method which is being applied.
Harbsmeier claims that he is criticizing Luke in the light of the Christus
praesens, that is to say from how he sees Jesus Christ as the centre of our
faith. But Bovon argues that, despite his disclaimers, his attack really arises
more from the theologus praesens than from the Christus praesens.
In other words, Harbsmeier doesn't like Luke.

Second, according to Bovon the centre of Luke's message, the
revelation of Christ as Saviour, is completely neglected by Harbsmeier in
favour of themes which Luke considered secondary or which he was not even able
to treat as such. That is to say, the method followed by Harbsmeier has the
effect of causing him to have a kind of tunnel vision in which he sees

[p.83]

only certain parts of Luke's theology; the result is that he both
misses out on what is central and also misjudges the parts which he does see
because he does not see them in their proper context.[18]

Numerous exegetes would agree with Bovon at this point. In
particular, I refer to W. G. Kümmel, in his essay on 'Current Theological
Accusations Against Luke'.[19] For Kümmel the
decisive question is whether Luke saw the history of Jesus as an eschatological
event - and he argues that he did. This is essentially the same point as Bovon
was making. But this is not the end of the matter. Kümmel says:

If we are neither willing to give up the concept
of the canon nor able to deny the presence of fundamental contradictions in the
New Testament, then we must necessarily face the question as to the central message of the New Testament, by which the statements of the
individual writings are to be assessed.

Working by this principle, Kümmel is prepared to defend Luke
as being in harmony with the central message of the NT, as it is found in the
agreement of Jesus, Paul and John.

He says:

By further developing the basic theological
viewpoints which had been handed down to him, Luke attempts to solve for his
own time the problems at the close of the period of earliest Christianity,
and in that he remains, in the main lines of his theology, in agreement with
the central proclamation of the New Testament.

Nevertheless, he continues:

That of course does not rule out the possibility
that legitimate criticisms may be levelled against the Lucan theology or that
individual passages, such as for example the Areopagus address, may contradict
the main tenor of his proclamation. But that is no less true for every other
form of New Testament theology. Even Luke does not offer the total and
the perfect theology of the New Testament; he must be heard in
connection with the other witnesses to New Testament theology and be criticized
and augmented from them.[20]

Two points emerge here. The first is that Kümmel admits the
possibility of serious doctrinal contradictions in the NT, but also that he
believes that when one applies Sachkritik to the specific case of Luke
and Paul Luke can be shown to be on the side of the angels. Kümmel, in
other words, carries out a harmonizing act and thereby demonstrates that in
principle harmonization is a legitimate procedure. The second point is that he
admits that Luke, like any other NT writer, is not always on the same level and
that he does contain statements which cannot be reconciled with his 'real
intention' or the 'real intention' of the NT as a whole. It is here that the
evangelical differs from him.

The problem of development

If we adopt an evangelical attitude to the Bible, we shall agree
that there are differences between earlier and later writers, but that our
principle of harmony suggests that these are differences in harmonious
development rather than irreconcilable contradictions. Hence the equivalent
of Sachkritik for us is placing biblical teaching in its proper place on
the developmental plan. Clearly this means that some parts of Scripture are
superseded by others or are not to be taken literally.

There is the fact that some pans of the OT are no longer
directly applicable within the NT church. I have already mentioned the OT
sacrificial system. Its literal application is no longer required, and this is
grounded in NT teaching which teaches that since Christ has offered the perfect
sacrifice, the animal sacrifices are now obsolete. Here is a clear example of
later teaching superseding earlier teaching. Yet the earlier teaching is not
totally rejected. It is now interpreted, as the writer to the Hebrews sees it,
as being a shadow of the good things to come, as being a kind of prophetic
pointer or symbol to the spiritual reality. Broadly this is true, but it must
be admitted that much of the minute detail in Leviticus, which once provided
the practical guide to Jewish religion, is now obsolete and cannot be used as a
basis for practical, biblical exposition in the way in which we might expound a
passage from the NT.

The same will apply within the NT itself to those passages where
Jesus addresses his disciples in terms of their continuing practice of the OT
cult (Mt. 5:23f; 6:16-18). We learn to distinguish between teaching which is
specific (a) to a particular audience at a particular time (e.g.
specific instructions by prophets) and (b) to a particular people in a
particular context (e.g. members of the Jewish cult). But in both cases
we recognize that behind the instructions there will be principles which can be
reapplied.

We also note that some teaching has a limited horizon. For
example, in the OT there are some fairly horrific examples of genocide and of
racial discrimination. In most, if not all, cases, the horizon of the command
or the narrative is the idolatry and immorality of the peoples concerned, and
the danger of their corrupting the people and polluting the land. In NT
teaching, Christians are commanded to love their neighbours and their enemies
and to seek to lead them to faith in God, and it is explicitly denied that if
people refuse to accept the faith the disciples of Jesus should call down fire
upon them, as Elijah did in OT times (Lk. 9:54f). We can say that the principle
behind the OT stories is a valid one within its horizon, namely that God's
people should seek to avoid being corrupted by idolatrous and immoral people,
but that the method followed, namely the annihilation of the tempters, is no
longer valid when we see things within the horizon of the command to love one's
enemies and to seek to lead the Lord's opponents to a knowledge of the
truth.[21] Consequently, we do not reject the OT
material out of hand as being primitive and now superseded by later material,
but we do recognize that we are to listen to it in a different way from the
original hearers of, say, the Deuteronomic law. One long tradition of
interpretation sees the Christian counterpart to the enemies of Israel in the
evil principalities and powers against which Christians must fight with all
their might.

But in coming to this conclusion we are engaging in a type of
evaluation akin to Sachkritik in that we had to formulate some principle
by which we judged that the OT teaching was no longer literally applicable.
Similarly, in the case of the teaching of Jesus about how to offer sacrifices,
it is not too difficult to formulate the principle that, since he had to give
his teaching in terms of the system then obtaining, and since the NT teaches
that this system no longer applies to Christians, we must modify this teaching
for a new situation.

The problem of diversity

A second possibility that arises is that in certain places we
shall find diversity in biblical teaching. We cannot simply adopt one view and
ignore the others. Nor may it be possible

[p.84]

to combine different views to form one total picture. Does such
diversity at times amount to contradiction, or can we legitimately speak of complementarity which gives rise to a deeper and fuller understanding of
truth?

We began our discussion by citing two examples of this problem,
Acts and the Pastorals. Let us go back over the problems.

With regard to Acts there were two specific problems: (a) the
general relation of Acts to Paul, and (b) the sub-Christian implications of
Acts 5:1-11.

In the case of (a) the problem is to be settled by exegesis: is it
the case that Acts really does give a different theological understanding from
that of Paul and one which is theologically inferior? We have already commented
on this problem, and we saw that Bovon and Kümmel claim that Harbsmeier's
case is not established exegetically.

(b) In the case of Acts 5:1-11 it is unacceptable to say that Luke
is merely reporting historically what happened, and that this is not
necessarily therefore an example to be followed by later Christians. The
difficulties are that Peter is presented as an exemplary leader, and that what
Luke is actually depicting is how God acted - or, if you prefer it, how the
early church and Luke himself interpreted two actual deaths as divine judgment
that left no place for repentance. Was Luke right to think that God could act
like that? We can certainly say, as Roloff in effect says, that when discipline
is applied in the church we must take into account all the evidence, or see it
in the light of the central message, and this will mean that discipline will be
exercised with a view to restoring the sinner.

But these points do not get to the heart of the matter, which is
basically whether the picture of God here and of the way in which the church
should act is inconsistent with the gospel. Liberals argue that it is.
Conservatives tend on the whole to accept it and to see no contradiction.

A better approach is to say that the horizon of the narrative
is limited; its purpose is solely to emphasize the heinousness of sin and
the serious character of divine judgment. The narrative is concerned simply to
stress these things: the question of an opportunity for repentance is not
raised her; although it is taught elsewhere and must be taken into account in
the church today. This is essentially the same approach as we took with regard
to the stern judgments on idolatry and sin in the OT. The practical result is
that we retain the passage as one which emphasizes the heinousness of sin and
the reality of divine judgment upon it, but that we insist that the passage
must not be taken on its own as a guide to the church's action today: we shall
insist that it was God who acted in judgment by striking down Ananias, and not
Peter, and that elsewhere in the NT the need to practise discipline in such a
way as to give the sinner the chance of repentance is inculcated. This solution
may not be universally acceptable. It will be objected that it still leaves a
picture of a God who strikes down the sinner without giving him opportunity for
repentance, and that it raises the question whether we believe that God may
still act in this way with erring members of the church. Part of the answer to
this charge may well be that judgment is more central to the biblical message
than many Christians are prepared to allow.

But again we have exercised a kind of Sachkritik in that we
have felt that there are grounds for placing this passage in a broader
scriptural context which affects its application to the church and to sinners
today. The problem is whether we go along with the verdict of Roloff that the
rigourism displayed here is not compatible with the spirit of Jesus and that
therefore the passage is in effect marred by spiritual blindness. Rather, we
have argued that the Bible does testify to the way in which wilful sin stands
under divine judgment, and that this fact must be held alongside the biblical
teaching on forgiveness. If it is objected that this presentation of divine
judgment is unacceptable, then we must ask the critic whether he has correctly
identified the 'real intention' of the Bible or is measuring the message of the
Bible by his own subjective criterion of judgment.

We can deal more quickly with the problem of the Pastorals. Here
the question is the validity of the kind of church order presented there when
compared with teaching elsewhere in the NT. Lips was right to say that we do
not reject this teaching outright on grounds of Sachkritik; indeed it
would be hard to find grounds for doing so. He is also right to say that we do
not simply take it over as it stands. For the fact is that there are several
types of church order and organization in the NT, and we seem to be forbidden
in principle from claiming that any one form is the final and definitive one.
Nor can the different systems be harmonized into one. What we can do is to ask
in each case what were the principles, the situation and the motives that led
to the specific type of order, and then seek whatever order will retain the
principles but be appropriate for our situation.

This again is Sachkritik in that it goes beneath the
surface teaching to ask what is the real underlying concern in a particular
area of teaching. It does not reject the authority of the teaching, but it does
recognize that the particular form in which the principles appear is
situation-bound, and that we must examine the different types of church
order in the NT in order to see what principles come to expression in
them.

The problem of unacceptable teaching

So we come, finally, to the problem of biblical teaching which
appears to be out of date or untrue for the church today, and the question
of what God is saying to us today from Scripture arises. Are we free to dismiss
some aspects of what Scripture says? 1 take the familiar example of one
specific aspect of the church order in the Pastorals, namely the refusal to
allow women to teach. How do we tackle that for today? My own understanding of
it is that this is a local, situation-bound restriction. But I say this on the
grounds (a) that what seems to me to be a central part of the concern of the
NT, namely the principle expressed in Galatians 3:28, overrules it, and (b)
that we do actually see women fully engaged in ministry in the NT itself'. In
other words, there is a contradiction within the NT message itself if this
passage is judged to be normative for all tim; including NT times.

Now this means that a passage which on other grounds seems to be
out of date for today is regarded as no longer literally binding not simply
because it is unacceptable but because when placed in the context of the NT
itself it is seen to be local rather than universal. There may well be
situations today when it ought to be taken literally, but these will be the
exception. Again, we shall not treat the passage as Scripture if we do not ask
what principles of universal validity lie behind it and led the author to
express himself for his local situation in

[p.85]

the way he did. But we do not reject the literal teaching of the
passage simply because we do not like it. Rather we have to see whether our
uneasiness about it arises out of our fundamental loyalty to the message of the
NT.

I have used the example of a passage which I do not believe
applies universally today because it is of local application in the NT. But now
let me mention a different example. If the world today tolerates homosexual
practices and refuses to regard them as sinful, then we do not go along with
this attitude, unless we can be convinced that the biblical attitude to
homosexual acts is local and situation-bound, or perhaps even culture-bound. We
are not at liberty to judge the teaching of Scripture by the standards of the
contemporary world, but on the contrary we have to recognize that the Bible
must be free to speak its prophetic and critical word to the practices and
beliefs of our world.

However, there may be another criterion of judgment. Is it proper
for us to assess biblical teaching not so much by the central concern of the
Bible itself as by a theological position which, while developed from the
Bible, claims to have reached a point beyond it, so that now we understand the
central message itself better than the biblical writers did? To be sure, there
are many cases where we have to go beyond biblical teaching expressed in a
specific cultural setting, for example in recognizing that slavery, while
accepted in the NT, is fundamentally at variance with the biblical
understanding of man. But it is another thing to question the doctrinal and
ethical principles which lie behind the situation- and culture-bound teaching
of the NT and to assert that we can criticize and reject these on the basis of
a position which is more 'advanced' than that of the biblical writers.

Barth saw the danger of a method which is all too likely to do
violence to a historical text in making it correspond to the interpreter's own
view', It sounds suspiciously like the Christus praesens of some of the
scholars we have been discussing, and the suggestion is that the Bible
contributes to revealing Christ, but is only one contributor out of
many. But there is not only the risk, alluded to earlier, that the scholar may
easily confuse the theologus praesens for the Christus praesens.
There is also the more fundamental objection which says that the Christus
praesens must be identical with the biblical Christ, and that it is the
biblical Christ who is and remains our authority. It is the Word of God, Christ
himself, revealed in the Scripture, who is the final authority, and the claim
of evangelical religion is that Scripture is a harmonious revelation of this
Christ The assumption may be wrong, but this is our faith, and this is
where we stand.

Conclusion

The evangelical doctrine of Scripture sets firm limits to the
practice of Sachkritik by showing that it is possible to distinguish
between its presuppositions and methods. We must admit the existence of the
problems that led to the development of Sachkritik, and the need to find
solutions to them, but we shall do so by a method that looks for the underlying
harmony and truth of the Word of God in Scripture, that recognizes the need for
human interpretation of Scripture, but that insists that at the end of the day
it is God's Word that judges us and not we that judge God's Word. It is
unfortunate that the English equivalents of the term may convey this false
impression that the reader can stand as critic over the theology of the Bible,
and a less tendentious name for the process would be helpful. At the end of the
day what we have to do is to compare Scripture with Scripture, to discover what
is the message of a given passage when seen within the total context of the
biblical revelation. Perhaps a more positive term like 'theological evaluation'
comes nearer to the intention of the method.

[21] Yet it cannot be
denied that the method has its attractions. Third Way 10:12, Dec. 1987,
p. 27, carries this quotation from Mark Twain, Pudd'nhead Wilson: 'Adam
was but human - this explains it all. He did not want the apple for the apple's
sake, he wanted it only because it was forbidden. The mistake was in not
forbidding the serpent; then he would have eaten the serpent.'